


#HOTPLACE #DAILY #SELFIE

by pulses



Category: Cravity (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mixed Media, Mutual Pining, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28411818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pulses/pseuds/pulses
Summary: Hanyang University Confessions#5245does anyone know if 1st year kang XX from the medicine department has a girlfriend? he’s super cute...😲👍❤️Park Jiwoo and 42 othersSeongmin just wants to graduate and get on with his life. Unfortunately for him, a distraction in the form of first-year university student Kang Minhee won't let that happen.
Relationships: Ahn Seongmin/Kang Minhee
Comments: 30
Kudos: 78





	#HOTPLACE #DAILY #SELFIE

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on [dreamwidth](https://girlrock.dreamwidth.org/11821.html), so feel free to check out the og barebones formatting there.
> 
>  **some notes** :  
> \- please read **with the creator style on**! this should still be readable without it, but the css formatting will definitely make things look better. (and i cobbled it together specifically for this fic, so.)  
> \- names that aren't cravity/txt members have no correlation with any other korean idol/celebrity, and were selected entirely for the sake of the fic.  
> \- taeyoung is technically in seongmin's grade, but i fudged with his early 03 status a little bit, so he's a 1st year with the 02z here; sorry in advance if the timeline reads as kind of weird/nonsensical.
> 
> this is an embarrassingly tropey mess, but please enjoy!

It all starts on a muggy August night, right at the beginning of Seongmin’s summer break. 

Seongmin is in his third year, which means that his college preparations are in full swing. He sits at his desk well into the night tackling his spring semester textbooks in advance, poring over physics practice sets and burning formulas into his brain. He isn’t too worried; his grades are pretty good, and he thinks he has a decent chance of getting into a school he likes with early admission. He’ll be applying in September. If all goes well, his last few months should be a breeze. 

But, still. It’s good to be prepared.

Seongmin likes having a plan. He doesn’t hang out with a lot of his school friends outside of class to begin with, so he doesn’t _need_ to go out. He’d rather sit at home studying or reading bad webtoons and listening to seasonally-inappropriate songs like Spring Day instead, and he’s completely fine with that. He enjoys his life this way.

Unfortunately for Seongmin, Ham Wonjin—second-year university student, perpetual pain in the ass, and Goo Jungmo’s kept man—seems to disagree. He goes out of his way to distract Seongmin as much as possible, messaging him things like, _you’re only 19 once! live a little!_ Seongmin is just as happy to throw Wonjin’s third year meltdowns back in his face, but there are only so many excuses he can come up with before Wonjin threatens to physically force him out of his room.

That’s how he gets him. Seongmin remembers thinking, _One karaoke night never hurt anyone, right?_

Right?

(Right?)

(Looking back, Seongmin would blame just about anything that happens during his last semester on Wonjin. If it hadn’t been for him, then… well—maybe Seongmin would have never gotten himself a boyfriend, he concedes. But Seongmin also wouldn’t have had to deal with—

How does one even begin to summarize Kang Minhee?

Well, you’ll see.)

  


**wonjin-hyung**  
hope you’re ready for karaoke tomorrow ^__^  
take a break from all those books~  
  
**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
of course i’m ready  
also, do you never study??  
i’m starting to question the caliber of hanyang’s social sciences department  
  
**wonjin-hyung**  
just for that, i’ll be singing fantastic baby <3  
  
**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
you’re so annoying  
  
**wonjin-hyung**  
hahaha so cute~ don’t worry~  
you don’t have to beg me, i’ll do an encore ^^  
oh by the way  
i’m going to bring a club hoobae with me if that’s okay?  
i promise he’s a good singer  
  
**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
yeah ok cool

  


Seongmin remembers the night being uncomfortably hot, drenched in deep waves of summer rain, the kind of heat that clings to every pore of your skin. He gets there early, so he waits under the arched awning of the karaoke entrance, right by the door with its iridescent basement staircase and the faint pounding bass of a K-pop song that thumps its way up every time a gaggle of high school girls tumble out onto the sidewalk. 

_i’m here_ , he messages Wonjin impatiently.

 _one more stop!_ , Wonjin replies.

Seongmin is in the middle of scrolling through his Instagram feed when he hears Wonjin call out his name. He looks up and sees him jogging toward him, waving one hand around while he adjusts an umbrella over his shoulder with the other. Wonjin is wearing an oversized striped tee over distressed jean shorts, and his dirty-blond hair runs frizzy from the humidity.

If it were just him, this would be like any of their outings: the two of them eating their hearts out in a dinky Hongdae karaoke room, wailing to BTS songs (Seongmin) or singing along off-key to whatever he thinks will annoy and/or bore Seongmin the most (Wonjin). Jungmo has been busy with internship work these days, so his time is mostly constrained to date nights with Wonjin, and Seongmin resolutely refuses to thirdwheel.

If it were just Wonjin, this would be a normal night.

But—of course—it isn’t. 

Because, standing next to Wonjin, dressed in a ridiculous black tee with one of those big baby faces printed on it and ripped jeans that run all the way down his stupidly long model-like legs, is Kang Minhee.

 _The club hoobae,_ Seongmin realizes with a start. He immediately curses himself for not having inquired further.

But, honestly speaking, how could he have known?

Last year, not even a full twelve months ago, Kang Minhee was the most popular student at Incheon Science High. He got good grades and was tall and almost painfully handsome, and his parents were doctors, and he had soft, long black hair that fell into his eyes (okay, Seongmin, _what?_ ). It was no surprise that he’d accrued something like a cult following at school. When Seongmin last checked (which was once—he only checked once), Minhee had a couple thousand followers on his Instagram page, and Seongmin remembers his arms overflowing with chocolate offerings on Valentine’s Day.

“Uh, hi,” Seongmin says dumbly.

Seongmin knows who Kang Minhee is, obviously. As he’s just established, everyone at his school did. But the two of them weren’t exactly close—for all that Seongmin is popular in his own regard, they’d never run in the same circles. How many times had they even spoken before? Once or twice, in passing?

That’s why the last thing Seongmin expects is for Minhee to take one look at him, make a noise akin to shock, and go: “ _Ahn Seongmin_ is your best friend?”

Seongmin puzzles at the casual tone of his voice. He scrambles to say something in response and comes up with nothing.

Wonjin, meanwhile, is looking at them with blatant interest. “Ooh, what a coincidence! How does Minhee know our Seongminie?”

“We went to high school together,” Minhee explains. He looks at Seongmin, and his face softens into a smile. “You remember me, right?”

“Uh, yeah...” Seongmin concedes, trailing off lamely. _Technically_ they did, but he isn’t sure it warrants a greeting like this.

“Great!” Wonjin says with a loud clap. “Minhee and I met during the astronomy club’s MT at the start of the school year. I thought that you guys might get along, but I didn’t realize you already knew each other!”

Seongmin frowns at that. “Well, we—uh. I mean, sure, but we weren’t really—”

“Why don’t we head down? It’s raining so hard,” Wonjin interrupts, smooth as ever. Minhee flashes Seongmin another smile. It’s somehow not even a little bit awkward, and Seongmin feels entirely out of his depth, so he just stands there and stares at him blankly. Then he notices them making their way down the stairs and quickly rushes to catch up.

That’s how it begins.

Wonjin loads up a few songs and orders them snacks. Seongmin finds out that Minhee has a surprisingly nice voice, and he scores a 99 on a heart-wrenching ballad from before their time. It fills him with some unplaceable emotion: annoyance, he thinks, at the fact that Kang “call me hyung!” Minhee, first-year _medicine_ student, can apparently do anything.

Ugh.

At the end of the night, Minhee turns toward Seongmin and fiddles around with his phone. “It was really nice getting to meet again,” he says. “Could I maybe get your number? I’d like it if we got closer.”

Staring at Minhee’s puppy eyes, a bit droopy and soft around the corners, Seongmin likes to think that he could have said no.

But who is he even kidding?

  


**Hanyang University Confessions**  
#5245  
does anyone know if 1st year kang XX from the medicine department has a girlfriend? he’s super cute...

😲👍❤️ Park Jiwoo and 42 others

**Kim Jinah**  
lol why is everyone going crazy in the comments??? what does he look like

**Park Jiwoo**  
**Jinah** [https://www.instagram.com/kangmini.02/](https://64.media.tumblr.com/2a8ce51c6e93083c20bdff50cc62e216/9d56a5b168dbae5b-84/s1280x1920/b935473de94a78e365f2e654bedc4aae7376397a.png)

**Kim Jinah**  
**Jiwoo** .......i'd like to request a refund on behalf of the computing department

**Ham Yujin**  
i have morning bio lecture with him ㅠㅠ seriously how can someone look that good at 8am...

**Lee Minyoung**  
**@Chaewon** f*ck ㅋㅋㅋㅋ was this you

**Ham Chaewon**  
**Minyoung** haha no but now i also want to know

**Lee Minyoung**  
**Chaewon** kang XX-ssi if you’re reading this we’re both single~~

**View more comments (21 of 50)**

  


**mini-hyung**  
seongmin-ah  
it was really great seeing you again!!!  
  
**seongmini**  
really??  
honestly speaking, i didn’t know you remembered me  
  
**mini-hyung**  
how could i not? :O  
let's not be strangers, okay??? ^^

  


**mini-hyung**  
hey seongmin!!! it’s hyung  
hahaha minhee-hyung i mean ^^  
are you free sometime this week?  
  
**seongmini**  
yeah i know i have your name saved…  
i'm just doing homework  
why?  
  
**mini-hyung**  
there’s a new marvel movie playing in theaters  
i was wondering if you'd want to watch with me??? i can buy popcorn :)  
**seongmini**  
  
yeah sure  
but you have to get me cheddar popcorn  
is saturday okay?  
  
**mini-hyung**  
sounds great!!  
and yup~ see you then!! n__n

  


**mini-hyung**  
i had a lot of fun tonight  
  
**seongmini**  
me too, hyung  
thanks for getting dinner with me :)  
  
**mini-hyung**  
kyaaa an emoticon??? from ahn seongmin????  
and here i was worrying that you didn't like me!!  
  
**seongmini**  
stop >_>  
i mean...  
you're not so bad  
  
**mini-hyung**  
[heart exploding]

  


**seongmini**  
there’s a new cafe i’ve been meaning to check out in itaewon  
i heard their big macarons are really good  
wanna go this weekend?  
  
**mini-hyung**  
i still have exams ㅜㅜㅜ but is next weekend okay?  
  
**seongmini**  
yeah no worries  
fighting on your exams hyung~  
  
**mini-hyung**  
thx ddeongminie~ :D  
you should come visit the club sometime btw  
when exams are over!  
i’m sure wonjin would love to have you around

When Seongmin was eleven, Wonjin’s family moved in next door so he could attend a better middle school. It was the one Seongmin was supposed to attend in two years, and their parents took one look at their approximate ages and decided to force them into a lifelong friendship destined to stand the test of Seongmin’s horrifying adolescent troubles. Thirteen-year-old Wonjin wore a stupid headband everywhere he went and carried around a football in the crook of his elbow and liked to tell people about how he’d voiced an animated character for an oil commercial when he was eight, and he was actually a bit annoying.

But he was also the only person who really talked to Seongmin. In high school, Wonjin ended up enrolling in a foreign school nearby while Seongmin followed the science track. It was their first time apart. Before Seongmin learned to grow out of his shell and into his own person—before he learned that not everyone was out to get him, that it was okay to take someone’s kindness at face value—he spent years only following Wonjin around.

Now that Seongmin is older, he looks at Wonjin and thinks: _even when I was intolerable, thank you for tolerating me._ But that’s not really the kind of friendship they have, so instead he shows it by letting Wonjin ruffle his hair for ten seconds instead of the usual five, hoping that he’ll somehow telepathically receive his gratitude.

Wonjin has gotten good at reading him. It’s his quirk, he’d say. (Wonjin watches too much anime.)

So when Minhee starts messaging Seongmin over and over again, and they start a competition over who can find the best new cafés in town, and Minhee buys Seongmin macarons because he knows they’re his favorite—Seongmin tells Wonjin nothing. He knows that he’d see right through him, and Seongmin isn’t stupid.

He knows that this doesn’t actually mean anything.

Kang Minhee is straight, after all. Seongmin isn’t going to make a fool of himself.

The astronomy club meets every week on the 5th floor of Hanyang Plaza, a huge multipurpose building where students loiter around various restaurants and cafés and pretend to study. Seongmin isn’t actually sure what they do there under the guise of scientific interest, but Minhee swears to him that they _actually_ observe things from time to time.

There are a few details that Minhee fails to mention, though. Because when Wonjin and Minhee arrange for him to visit, Seongmin doesn’t expect to walk in and see his old high school crush standing by the club room window.

“Taeyoung?” 

Kim Taeyoung—first year university student, Applied Mathematics major, and casual TikTok star—turns around at the sound of his name being called out and instantly gasps.

“What! No way, is that Ahn Seongmin?” he asks, eyes wide. He’s standing next to another boy, around Taeyoung’s height, who has brown hair running past the nape of his neck and these big, impossibly round eyes. Taeyoung takes hold of his hand and pulls him toward Seongmin. “Wow, it’s so nice to see you again! Uh, Seongmin. This is Kang Taehyun.” He gestures to his left with his unoccupied hand, and the other boy smiles at him with two rows of perfect, gleaming white teeth. Seongmin feels vaguely intimidated. “We’re both in the math department. Taehyun, this is Ahn Seongmin. Seongmin and I were in the math club in high school together. Seongmin is graduating this year!”

“You let your high school friend use banmal with you?” Taehyun asks, eyeing them a little curiously.

Taeyoung shrugs nonchalantly. “Best of both worlds, right? I like being friends with everyone!”

“I didn’t know you were in the astronomy club,” Seongmin tells him. “Actually, I didn’t know astronomy was such a unifying interest?”

“Oh, uh, yeah.” Taeyoung giggles nervously. “Uh, Taehyun and I met at orientation and he dragged me here. And uh, the rest was history, you know? But astronomy is actually pretty fun! You should definitely join if you end up coming here. Did Wonjin-hyung invite you?”

Taeyoung is vibrating with an undercurrent of tense excitement, and Seongmin stares between him and Taehyun with narrowed eyes. He resists the urge to raise an eyebrow at the way Taeyoung smiles at him—at this Kang Taehyun character who stands there with his hands in his pockets and watches with polite, practiced interest. Seongmin has known Kim Taeyoung for two years. He’s never seen him fluster like this, and he looks different, too: dressed in a stylish coat and well-fitted jeans, his hair brushed through. Seongmin can’t discern how much of the change is just from starting university.

If this were a year or two ago, Seongmin’s heart would probably be in knots looking at them. He would go home and lie in bed with the sheets over his head, and he would wonder why he hurt so much, why life had to be unfair, why he could never be good enough.

(He’d joined a _math club_ for him, for god’s sake.) 

But Seongmin is nineteen now. He and Taeyoung are just acquaintances—old high school friends who hadn’t even known they were running in the same circles for the past few months. Now, Seongmin is only fascinated to learn that someone as shameless as Taeyoung can be awkward about things, too. That he can get dragged into these inane interests by another person with particular tastes and influence.

“No, actually.” Then he winces a little, preemptively anticipating Taeyoung’s reaction. “I came with Minhee-hyung.”

Taeyoung’s mouth makes a perfect ‘o’, just as expected. “Minhee-hyung… as in, Kang Minhee?” he confirms. 

Seongmin hears someone shuffling behind him, and—as if on cue—turns around to see Minhee materializing from behind him. Minhee smiles crookedly and puts one hand on his shoulder. 

“Hey,” he greets. “I was looking for you.”

Taeyoung’s eyes track the placement of Minhee’s hand with open fascination, but Minhee heeds him no mind and looks directly at Seongmin instead.

“I told Wonjin-hyung that I’d show you around the rest of campus. Wanna take a look at the equipment here and then head out?”

They walk around for what feels like hours but is probably thirty minutes, Seongmin unaccustomed to a sprawling campus with endless buildings and amenities. Minhee’s arm around Seongmin, the bulk of it pulling him along, rests like a heavy weight on his shoulders. Seongmin is hyperaware of the touch.

They return to the plaza sometime later, when Seongmin complains that he’s hungry and Minhee offers to treat him with his student discount. Minhee pulls up a chair in one of the lobby cafés and makes him sit, and a few minutes later he returns with a large mint choco bingsu resting on a plastic tray. Seongmin squeals and digs in with abandon.

“So...” Minhee starts. “Has my tour made you want to attend Hanyang?”

Seongmin pops his spoon into his mouth, humming. “Mmm, I don’t know. This bingsu is pretty good, but… what about the people?”

“What about them?” asks Minhee. His eyes narrow conspiratorially. 

“I don’t know, I’ve heard a lot of bad things about the astronomy club. I’m not sure my parents would approve of me getting involved with delinquents like that, you know?”

Minhee throws his head back and laughs. “ _Delinquents?_ The delinquents are all in the dance club, trust me. Their MTs are crazy. I heard someone got arrested for streaking drunk in a residential area last year. We just dress up in an Airbnb and sing around a karaoke machine and drink a little bit of soju and look at the stars on the beach for two nights.”

“That’s—that’s. A lot,” Seongmin admits. He goes to rest his head against the cool marble of the café table, and then realizes that it probably isn’t very clean and presses his cheek against a palm instead. “I don’t know. I feel like university is so different. Taeyoung is only a few months older than me, but everyone here... feels bigger, somehow.”

“Taeyoung? Did you guys know each other back in Incheon? We were never close.”

“Yeah,” Seongmin sighs. “We were in a club together. You know what’s funny? Back in high school, I had the biggest crush ever on him.”

If Seongmin hadn’t been finishing up the last dredges of shaved ice, licking chocolate syrup off of his spoon and watching Minhee with sharp, focused eyes, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the way Minhee freezes.

 _Should I have not said that?_ Seongmin thinks, suddenly filled with regret. 

“Sorry, I—”

“Do you still like him?” Minhee asks.

Seongmin shakes his head. “No way,” he rushes, looking down at his hands. “I mean, Taeyoung is cute and everything, right? But he was just a friend, and I’ve been over him forever. I didn’t even know he was in the club until today.”

When Seongmin looks at Minhee again, his face is still weirdly serious, one brow inexplicably furrowed. Seongmin wishes he could find a way to smooth it over.

“Uh, really—I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable—”

Minhee shakes himself. “What? No, you’re totally fine. I’m glad you’re over him now.” He flushes at the way his words come out: just the slightest tinge of pink on his cheekbones, his puppy eyes widening. “I mean—”

“No, it’s fine.” Seongmin laughs. “I’m glad I am, too.”

They get up to return the tray, and then Seongmin parts ways with him at the nearest subway stop. On the way back, Seongmin holds onto the overhead railing and puts on a Baek Yerin song, the click-clang of train wheels rolling over tracks seeping through his earphones. He hopes that Minhee’s temporary weirdness is just a fluke. That everything will go back to normal the next day, the next week, whenever they get to see each other again.

Instead, Minhee just gets weirder.

Seongmin is admitted to Hanyang—amongst a few other schools—in November. He’s still not sure whether he’ll attend, or if he even wants to pursue science anymore, so he gets in touch with Taeyoung. Taeyoung invites him to another café on campus so they can talk through his options. 

“It’s good that you got into a hard major,” says Taeyoung. “Transfering will be easy. Is there anything you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” Seongmin says. “I mean, I have time, right?”

“Yeah, of course! My friend—uh, Taehyun’s friend, Kai. He’s from another science school, but he’s studying translation now. And his boyfriend is training to be a psychologist.”

Seongmin is a bit surprised at how many of these random guys affiliated with the astronomy club seem to have boyfriends, but he says nothing about it. Maybe that’s just how university is.

“That’s—that’s cool,” he tries instead. “Thanks, really. I would have asked Minhee-hyung, but… I don’t know. He just seems so confident, and I’m—like—” Seongmin gestures vaguely. “You know.”

“Minhee?” Taeyoung laughs. “Confident? I think he has a mini crisis over being pressured into medicine by his parents every day of his life. We’re all just making do with what we have, Seongmin-ah. Don’t feel ashamed about that.”

Seongmin blinks at the admission, but it doesn’t seem right to delve into _that_ further. Instead they make small talk and discuss Taeyoung's time in university, and then Seongmin thanks him for his time and gets up to order himself a grapefruit ade on his way out. When he steps up to a park bench shaded under a big oak tree in the heart of campus, Seongmin takes out his phone and opens up his chat with Minhee.

  


**seongmini**  
hey, i’m on campus right now  
do you want to hang out for a bit?  
  
**mini-hyung**  
:O what are you doing here?  
  
**seongmini**  
i just met up with taeyoung for a chat  
  
**seongmini**  
...hello???  
you there?  
  
**mini-hyung**  
sorry was walking  
you and taeyoung are getting pretty close, huh?  
  
**seongmini**  
i mean, we’ve always been friends  
it's not like that!!!  
  
**mini-hyung**  
haha if you say so  
i’d love to meet but i’m kind of busy right now  
i have a group meeting ㅜㅜㅜ  
next time?

  


Seongmin can’t help but feel a little unsettled by how quickly Minhee brushes him off, but he realizes that Minhee doesn’t really have any reason to _lie_. He doesn’t know: maybe he did have a group meeting. Maybe there isn’t any issue, even though he still worries that there is—he just can’t quite place his finger on it. 

He can’t, that is, until the day they grab lunch together.

Minhee looks especially carefree today. His hair is freshly cut and he has a dash of perfume on, and Seongmin hates himself for immediately noticing either of these things. With exams still a ways out, Minhee isn’t stressing over his studies and group projects anymore, and Seongmin feels like things might just be okay.

After they make their way through an entire potato bacon pizza, just the two of them, fingers still sticky with pizza grease and remnants of spilled soda, Minhee leans back and stretches his arms over the back of his chair with a loud groan.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom real quick,” he says, pulling his seat out and hopping to his feet. “Give me a sec.”

Seongmin watches him leave. He moves to take his own phone out, to find something inane to pass the time with, when Minhee’s phone buzzes and lights up beside him.

What’s important to understand is: Ahn Seongmin is not a nosy person. He doesn’t care about what people are up to most of the time, and he understands that everyone has their secrets. There are just things that people are allowed to keep to themselves, after all.

But when Minhee leaves his phone face-up on the counter table, and three messages burst onto the screen in quick succession—and the pizza table is barely wide enough to fit the pizza itself, so Minhee’s phone was literally right in front of his face—well, is he _not_ supposed to look?

In retrospect, he wishes he hadn’t.

KAKAOTALK now  
**nayun-noona**  
could you bring it to me in lecture tomorrow?

KAKAOTALK now  
**nayun-noona**  
also i think i might have left my coat in your room >__<

KAKAOTALK now  
**nayun-noona**  
minhee-yah, i had a lot of fun yesterday! let’s get dinner again soon~

Seongmin leans back against the couch chair, feeling mutedly sick.

Suddenly—all those times make sense to him. The times when Minhee had looked awkward at Seongmin talking about his old crush on Taeyoung, when Minhee had seen Seongmin chatting to him and Taehyun and had averted his eyes like he was being burned, when he said, _you and taeyoung are getting closer, huh?_ like something was crawling up his skin. Suddenly, the _issue_ makes sense to him. Seongmin is horrified that he could have missed something so obvious.

Of course Minhee has a girlfriend. Of course “Nayun-noona” is older than him. Seongmin can imagine it perfectly. A girl around Seongmin’s height, with a small face and long legs, with light and pretty makeup, a girl who also wants to be a doctor. A girl who is settling for Kang Minhee, never the other way around. A girl who leaves her clothes in his room after doing god knows what, and then messages him cute smiley faces over it like it’s nothing.

Minhee must have thought him so silly, this high school senior chasing him around like that, talking to him about the boys he liked. Seongmin who filled all the spaces in his busy third year schedule with Minhee’s face and smile and time, never daring to let go even when he bluffed otherwise.

Seongmin wants to cry.

“Ready to go?” Minhee asks, startling him from his stupor. Seongmin looks up to see him standing on the other side of the table, slipping his padding back on. “Want to get dessert?”

No, he doesn’t want to get _dessert,_ Seongmin wants to scream.

“Sorry,” he blurts out. He feels all choked up, and he can’t bear to have Minhee see him like this. “I, uh—sorry. My mom just texted me. I have to go.”

“Oka—”

“I’ll see you later, ‘kay?” Seongmin rushes. And then he’s barrelling out the door, hugging two arms around his long padding, the cold cutting through him from inside.

**mini-hyung**  
is everything okay?

If this were a year or two ago, Seongmin would have gone home and lied down in bed with the sheets over his head, wondering why life had to be so unfair. Why he wasn’t this Nayun-noona who left her clothes in Minhee’s room and took classes with him and probably didn’t make a fool of herself every time she spoke. Why he wasn’t good enough. 

But Seongmin is nineteen, so instead he lies down on top of his sheets and stares angry holes into the ceiling, not letting himself feel anything.

He doesn’t cry, but a part of him knows he wants to.

For two days, Seongmin goes about his life and resolutely ignores the message burning a hole into the pocket of his coat. Seongmin goes to school. He sits through exams and talks to his friends during lunch break, and then he comes home and goes straight to his room and pulls out his textbooks and studies. He eats five tangerines right out of the fridge after dinner, standing helplessly in the open doorway while his younger brother looks on and calls him weird.

Seongmin spent months guarding the friendship he had with Kang Minhee like it was something special, like no one else could look into it and see how tenuous their connection was. They were fundamentally different people—Minhee was shyer than he let on, but he was still beautiful, almost intangible. Seongmin doesn’t understand what Minhee ever saw in him, even just as a friend.

He knows what he needs to do: for closure’s sake. To end this chapter and move on with his life.

Wonjin has always been good at reading him. For all that Seongmin didn’t tell him, for all of Seongmin's careful secrecy—about his and Minhee's café outings, about their time spent around the city and Seongmin clinging to Minhee’s sleeve in large Itaewon crowds—Wonjin had seen them in the clubroom. Seongmin knows, deep inside, that Wonjin had seen straight through his heart.

  


**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
do you think minhee-hyung is homophobic?  
  
**wonjin-hyung**  
????  
?????????????  
uh, hello to you too  
please explain?  
  
**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
i don’t know, just  
all this time i thought we were friends  
but he started being really weird about taeyoung  
and now i’m pretty sure he has a girlfriend  
and that he’s just been stringing me along  
and maybe this whole thing was stupid anyway??  
  
**wonjin-hyung**  
wow, okay  
breathe  
  
**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
maybe he was just lying to get close to me  
so he could BEAT ME UP  
  
**wonjin-hyung**  
are... you joking?  
  
**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
no?  
why would i be joking?  
  
**wonjin-hyung**  
you think minhee being obsessed with you is part of his…  
what  
masterplan to hatecrime you???  
  
**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
i feel like you’re judging me.  
i can sense some judgment through your tone  
  
**wonjin-hyung**  
answer your phone, idiot

  


“Seongmin-ah, have you lost your mind or are you just being purposely obtuse?” Wonjin demands.

“What?” Seongmin protests. “Isn’t this a perfectly legitimate concern? I don’t want to get beaten up by some—some deceptively kind 190cm Hanyang ladies’ man!”

“Okay, first of all. Minhee isn’t even close to being a ladies’ man. One of the girls in our club tried to kiss him after downing a bottle of soju at an event once and he nearly toppled over scrambling to get away. Haven’t you hung out enough times to suss out that he’s kind of a loser?”

“Well, isn’t that because he has a—”

“Also, _why_ would he be homophobic? You know he’s friends with Jungmo-hyung too, right? He third-wheeled one of our dinner dates last week and kept telling me how jealous he was of our relationship even though hyung spent the whole night complaining about me.”

“Okay, so maybe he isn’t homophobic,” Seongmin concedes. Willingly accompanying Jungmo and Wonjin on one of their insufferable Friday night dates was too damning, even for someone like Kang Minhee.

“You see? Nothing to worry about.”

“But if he isn’t homophobic, and he doesn’t want to beat me up, then—I mean, isn’t it kind of weird? The day I visited the club, I told Minhee-hyung off-hand that I used to have a crush on Taeyoung, and he… made this face like he’d just swallowed a lemon.”

“Minhee loves lemons,” answers Wonjin instinctively. 

“That’s… definitely not the point? Anyway, after that he got really weird about Taeyoung. And then some girl named Nayun messaged him and said she left his coat at his place, so I’m pretty sure they’re dating! And I don’t really want to hang out with someone if they’re uncomfortable with me being gay! And if I kind of like him and he has a girlfriend he didn’t tell me about!”

“Oh my god,” Wonjin groans. “Seongmin-ah, what? Nayun is the girl from the club event. Minhee is 100% single.”

“And—what?”

“They were probably just on a study da… study… outing. Study thing. A platonic study date. I don’t know what kind of miscommunication you guys have been having, but I can assure you that he doesn’t have feelings for Nayun. Doesn’t Minhee take you out to the movies and stuff?”

“He told you that?” Seongmin asks, shocked. 

“Yeah, and I’m kind of hurt that you didn’t!” Wonjin announces. Seongmin winces but says nothing. “Anyway, do you think Minhee would do that for literally anyone else? Or that he’d do that if he were uncomfortable with you being gay? He told me he lets you win at games because he thinks that, and I quote, ‘you’re so cute when you think you’ve beaten someone.’ Minhee is a youngest child. He hates losing and he hates paying for things, especially food.”

Seongmin’s brain is working in overdrive to process all of this information. 

All this time, he realizes, he’s seen only the parts of Minhee that made sense to him. To protect himself, maybe, from the hypothetical of Minhee not liking him the way he wanted him to? To protect Minhee from Seongmin’s own expectations? To ignore what he really hoped this all meant, under all of the pretense, under the layers he was so afraid to pull back, to peel away?

“Do you still not get it? Because I will actually just tell you right now. Are you in a private place and emotionally prepared to receive sensitive information?”

“Uh, no,” Seongmin breathes out. His heart hurts. Gusts of wind buffet his hair from every direction, leaving him dizzy. Like that drop of vertigo when you spring off the bed too quickly. “I just left the convenience store.”

“Great!” Wonjin replies brightly. “So, Minhee has an astronomical crush on you.”

  


**seongmini**  
i’m okay  
sorry for the late response  
can we talk?  
  
**mini-hyung**  
my apartment?  
tomorrow, 1pm?

  


The next day, when Minhee gets the door and looks down at Seongmin from the open frame of his apartment, he’s wearing oversized sweats and has his hands dug deep into the pockets. Seongmin’s mouth runs dry.

“Hi,” he says. “I—I’m sorry, again. I think we need to talk.”

Minhee smiles. Says, “Come on in. It’s cold out.”

Seongmin nods and goes to take his shoes off, padding in behind Minhee. They enter Minhee’s room, and Seongmin drapes his coat over the back of his desk chair with a small, nervous smile. Inwardly he feels foolish over how he’s acted these past few days. How an action so simple—the body of a coat bent over a chair, the arms folded over the back, something left behind without a second thought—could mean nothing in the end.

“Hyung,” Seongmin blurts out. “I was freaking out earlier, and—I can’t tell you why, because it’s stupid. But I talked to Wonjin-hyung and he told me something I needed to hear. And I don’t know if he’s actually right, but—I need to tell you now, or I never will.”

“What is it, Seongmin-ah?” Minhee asks, gentle.

Seongmin takes in a deep breath. “Hyung. I don’t know if you feel the same way, but—I like you. A lot. I’ve liked you since August, I think.” 

“August?” asks Minhee, voice low. His eyes are twinkling, and when he laughs, it’s a gentle sound, like wind chimes twinkling in a breeze. He looks down at Seongmin and takes hold of his hands.

Seongmin’s hands are smaller than his. Like everything of his—it’s always been Kang Minhee, legs long and firm, his knobbly fingers caressing the skin of Seongmin’s palm, towering over him. For all of their physical differences, Minhee has never intentionally made him feel trivial, never made him feel smaller where it mattered. Instead, Minhee has always listened; he’d bought Seongmin macarons and watched him eat them from the other side of decorative tables too small for his long limbs, let sunlight fracture through glossy windowpanes and shimmer gold along the side of his cheekbone.

Seongmin's heart is about to burst. 

“I’ve liked you since high school,” Minhee says. And— _what?_ “On sports day, when you knocked me over during the relay race because you knew you couldn’t run faster than me, and then you sped around the field in circles squealing when your team won.”

“What?” Seongmin splutters. “I—I never did that.”

“You literally bowled into me and started gloating when I tripped and hit the ground! And when my teammates tried to complain you just looked at them so innocently you got away with it. It was unbelievable.” He pauses. “And also kind of cute.”

So, maybe Wonjin was telling the truth.

“You… actually like me? You’re telling me that you’ve liked me—since— _two years ago?_ ”

“You’re the cutest person I’ve ever met,” Minhee says bluntly. “Isn’t this what you came to hear?”

Seongmin makes a choked noise in the back of his throat, resisting the urge to scream into his hands. His hands—they’re still caught in Minhee’s soft grip, the weight of it warm and reassuring. It’s just like that time on campus when Minhee’s arm had hooked around his shoulder, and Seongmin had been filled to the brim with frenetic bursts of energy.

“Why were you so weird about Taeyoung, then?” he asks. “I mean, Taeyoung and I haven’t even spoken that much this year.”

Minhee pouts. “I guess I was a little jealous. I mean, not because you were talking to each other! But I thought you still liked him. And I knew that he liked Taehyun, so I was also worried for you. I didn’t want your feelings to get hurt, or anything.”

“What? I already knew he liked Taehyun! Did you really think I was just some lovesick fool who couldn’t see the way they were looking at each other? I probably knew before you did, idiot!”

“Hey!” Minhee protests. “Well, that’s probably true. I’m sorry for underestimating you. And for being weird about things.”

“It’s fine,” Seongmin tells him. “I’m sorry I looked at your notifications by accident and thought you were dating someone named Nayun from your astronomy club, and then I ignored you for two days because I thought you were homophobic.”

“Good—uh, what did you say?”

Seongmin sits up with a shit-eating grin. “So, can we kiss now?”

Later on, Minhee puts on one of his threadbare pajama shirts and pulls him to bed. Seongmin leans his head against his chest, his overgrown hair fanning over the back of his neck. He’s wearing Minhee’s favorite sweater and has the hood up. The arms are too long on him, and the sleeves run past the tips of his fingers, the inside soft and warm against his skin. 

Minhee pulls out his phone and flips the camera to selfie mode. From this angle, no one can see Seongmin’s face. There is only Minhee’s arm pressing him close to his chest, the slightest tuft of hair peeking out from under the fabric of his hood. The tip of a nose. Nothing more.

Minhee snaps the photo and posts it to his page without a second thought. He captions it, _happy ❤️_ , and then he turns off the lights and snuggles into his sheets with Seongmin tucked up against him.

“Goodnight,” he whispers.

“Mmm,” Seongmin grumbles wearily. 

But he’s smiling, and Minhee knows it.

The next day comes like a gentle wave. The barest peek of sunrise greets them through the open sliver of Minhee’s curtains, and Seongmin thinks that he would be happy to lie there forever.

Of course, neither of them expects the hundred-something comments that have accrued on Minhee’s Instagram post overnight. When Minhee unlocks his phone and gasps at the wall of notifications, Seongmin grabs it out of his hands and scrolls through his page in sheer disbelief.

“Why do all your photos have so many comments,” he asks, horrified. “Why do you have _eleven thousand_ followers?”

“Haha,” Minhee intones sheepishly. 

So, maybe he hadn’t thought this one through.

“Why do they think I’m a _girl?_ ” Seongmin squeaks. “Hyung, why are they all crying in your comments!?”

**Hanyang University Confessions**  
#5392  
first year medicine student kang XX has a girlfriend now ㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜ  
who else is mourning ㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜㅜ

🤣😢❤️ Lee Minyoung and 26 others

**Park Jiwoo**  
ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ op it’s going to be okay

**Lee Minyoung**  
@ mods why do you still censor his name? we all know who it is ㅎ

**Ham Wonjin**  
heol she looks cute >.< so jealous~~

**Kang Taehyun**  
**Wonjin** ??? hyung what are you doing here

**Kim Taeyoung**  
**Wonjin** you’re so weird...

**View more comments (17 of 27)**

  


**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
you don't even know if that's me  
  
**wonjin-hyung**  
i can see your nose mole, idiot  
  
**baby rabbit (seongmin)**  
...  
i'm going to fucking kill you  
and kang minhee  
both of your days are numbered.  
  
**wonjin-hyung**  
kyaaa 🥰 my dongsaeng is so cute~  
we love you too <3

**Author's Note:**

> [title song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1taLXjVxB4U) ♡
> 
> css credits: fb/iphone notifs were done by me (you can find small fb tutorial [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29665323)) and the apeach kkt screens were adapted from this [tutorial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434845)!


End file.
